Francis of Assisi was especially fond of Christmas, as he believed the birth of Jesus would usher in the redemption of humanity. On Holy Night, 1223, in Greccio, Italy, he held a celebration that would soon enter the annals of Christian history. Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of Francis of Assisi, described the event in his writings, stating how the saint requested that a crib be constructed between the rocky hillsides of the village woods.

Hay and straw were added to the manger, a newborn baby placed in it, and an ox and donkey led to the site. Celano wrote movingly how this reconstruction of the biblical scene “made Greccio into a new Bethlehem,” outlining the miraculous virtues of the manger, and how it reignited the faith of the audience.

Holy Night Moves beyond the Confines of the Church

“The birth of Jesus Christ was, so to speak, translated to the reality of the 13th century through the theatrical spectacle in Greccio,” says Thomas Ertl, a professor of medieval history at Freie Universität and an expert in the early history of the Franciscan Order. The nativity scene was not a new concept per se; liturgical plays at Christmastime had been widespread up to two centuries before Francis was born. What was new, however, was the dramatic flair of the performance.

“The theatrical elements, this break with the traditional liturgy, and even the fact that the celebration of Holy Night was being held on a torch-lit open-air stage rather inside the walls of the church – all this presented the Gospel in a new light, one that the faithful had never experienced before.” Ertl explains that il poverello – or the poor little man of Assisi, as Francis was known – wanted to bring the wretched reality of the manger in Bethlehem and the helplessness of the infant Jesus to life in doing so.

St. Francis – Performer and Ascetic

This perfectly suited Francis’ style of preaching, which was based on actions and performance rather than words. “His sermons, which he held in the local vernacular, were passionate and charged for the most immediate emotional impact,” says Professor Ertl. The Christmas celebrations in Greccio didn’t just spread like wildfire throughout Europe.

Francis also gave the social commentary inherent to the Bible’s telling of the Christmas story a fresh intensity. By conveying the image of God as a helpless child on the fringes of society, he wanted the audience to see God in every person in need they came across.

Francis of Assisi, once dismissed as an eccentric, went on to found of one of the many mendicant orders established since the 12th century. What these communities have in common is that their members strive to live in poverty in imitation of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. Francis called upon his companions to reject all possessions – they didn’t even own the clothes on their backs – and they weren’t allowed to as much as touch money.

The friars dedicated themselves to a life of tending to the poorest and most neglected people in society. The emergence of the Franciscans thus coincided with the rapid development of grinding poverty, which soon became prevalent in cities.

Demographic Changes and Poverty

According to Professor Ertl, apostolic poverty was in many ways a reaction to far-reaching economic and social changes in the High Middle Ages. The population of Europe doubled between the 10th and 13th centuries, and urbanization meant that between 10 and 15 percent of people lived in cities. This was accompanied by an economic boom in trade.

“As the cities of the High Middle Ages exuded wealth through their towers, town walls, and churches, social strata that would not get their fair share of these riches began to emerge,” explains Professor Ertl. The period saw the emergence of a new phenomenon: wage poverty. “The divide between large-scale and small-scale farmers grew. Landless farmers who were unable to live off their income were forced to find new sources of income through wage labor in the towns and cities.”

This didn’t just result in poor people from the countryside migrating to the more promising towns and cities, where they often found just as precarious working conditions; it also meant that poverty became more visible. Estimates based on tax records from central and western Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages indicate that one- to two-thirds of the urban population were living from hand to mouth.

“The concentration of poverty in the cities led to profound theological reflection among people – like the Franciscans – who were invested in the concerns of marginalized groups and the poor,” adds Professor Ertl.

Nativity Scene Still Sparks Controversy

The new consciousness surrounding poverty was also a reaction to the discrepancy between the vocation of bishops, which demanded that they be the successors of the Apostles, and their luxurious lifestyles, which stood in stark contrast to the teachings of Jesus and his brethren.

“Francis and his followers believed that the Church had strayed from the teachings of Jesus Christ. That’s why they took it upon themselves to bring the meaning of the original Church back to the forefront,” says Professor Ertl. The Christmas celebrations in Greccio are therefore a particularly pithy example of how the key messages of the Gospel could be conveyed to people in an innovative and tangible way.

Pope Gregor IX, who was elected to the papacy six months after Francis’ death, supported the burgeoning Franciscan Order, while also undermining the Franciscan ideal of poverty, which he feared could unleash a subversive force within the Church. After all, this community claiming to be the true Church and in which property held no meaning must have posed a significant affront to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which relied heavily on wealth and domination.

“Francis ignited a discussion on the fair distribution of wealth and how we treat each other,” says Professor Ertl. The core themes of the story of Christmas, such as the desperation of those seeking refuge, homelessness, and poverty, are still highly pertinent today. And just like in the Middle Ages, the nativity scene has been used to spark political discussions on social inequality in the modern era.

A recent example of this is when a church in Worms wanted to highlight the hardship endured by today’s refugees and the suffering of poor people throughout the world by staging the flight of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus to Egypt at a Christmas market in 2014. The city council later prohibited the nativity play, claiming it posed a threat to public order.

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The full text originally appeared in German on Deceber 1, 2020, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität.